MINNEAPOLIS — Hours before President Biden arrived in Minnesota as part of his "barnstorming" tour of rural America, a group of prominent Muslim community leaders held a news conference outside the Federal Courthouse in Minneapolis, to announce that they had lost faith in an administration they had spent years supporting.
"Last Friday, in a press conference, we asked Mr. Biden if he was on the side of life. We heard nothing," said Hassan Abdel Salam, a professor of Human Rights at the University of Minnesota. "Mr. President, you have abandoned us."
The leaders, in turn, held up "Abandon Biden" signs, but in addition to pulling their support for the President, they say they will actively work to defeat him in 2024.
The news conference was led by Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Minnesota, but he said he was speaking as a community leader, not on behalf of his organization.
"We stand on the side of saving life, we stand on the side of peace, we stand on the side of recognizing the humanity of Palestinian children," Hussein said. "50K Muslim voters plus, will not be voting for President Biden in the upcoming 2024 election. This is not a faint promise. This is a guarantee."
If the group follows through, and mobilizes that many Minnesota Muslims in opposition to Biden, it would still represent just a small fraction of Minnesota voters, but for those following a similar movement among Muslim and Arab American voters nationally, the movement cannot be ignored.
"As a political reporter who has done stories across the country, done lots of demographic stories on lots of different things, the thing that is really striking to me and different here, is the level of organization that's involved," said Alex Seitz-Wald, a senior political reporter for NBC News Online. "I have to say I've never encountered the intensity and the unanimity talking to Muslim voters across the country, where it's just every single one, to a person, is furious."
Seitz-Wald says it also marks a furious reversal. He points to a post-election poll conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations that found that 69% of Muslim-American voters backed Biden in 2020.
In 2024, he says they figure to play pivotal roles in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
"These just so happen to be the most important electoral states but they also happen to have fairly large Muslim populations," Seitz-Wald said. "If you go through the numbers, as we did, there are at least theoretically, easily large enough portions of Muslim voters to swing the election away from Joe Biden.
The one thing I would say, you know, we're a year out from the election. As Joe Biden always says, don't compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the other guy. Right now we're not hearing much from the other guy, who is probably going to be Donald Trump."
In October, Trump told Iowa voters that, if elected, he plans to expand his former travel ban for Muslim-majority countries to include a new push to bar refugees from Gaza. Trump called them a threat to US security.
Still, the Minnesota Muslim community leaders say their opposition to Biden won't be swayed by Trump.
"As American Muslims we have suffered under many Presidents under different types of policies, but this (war in Gaza) in particular is a big red line," Hussein said. "We believe, by not electing Biden, and him losing, it will reset the political discourse on the American Muslim vote. We believe that if Trump becomes the President, and it's a likelihood chance, four years under him, how horrible it could be, is never equivalent to one night in Gaza."
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